


a pound of flesh

by viscrael



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: (implied) - Freeform, Angst, Childhood Trauma, M/M, POV Second Person, Poetry, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Unrequited Love, blood tw, i wrote a poem about gay boys wow, post-chimera ant arch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-06
Updated: 2015-06-06
Packaged: 2018-04-03 03:34:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4085134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viscrael/pseuds/viscrael
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You wanted to protect him, you needed to protect him but you—</p>
<p>You were destined to kill</p>
<p>You were destined to be alone</p>
            </blockquote>





	a pound of flesh

**Author's Note:**

> song of the day: "a pound of flesh" by radical face
> 
> mmmMMMMMMMMM im trash and apparently wrote a poem abt killugon??? yep. v killua centric! lots of spoilers for the chimera ant arch so
> 
> also mmmm 
> 
> WARNINGs: blood, talk of death + murder, some gorey stuff ish?, ye

By the time you were three years old you had already learned more than most people do in their entire lifetime

Not about numbers or history or the logistics of the world around you; but about the perfect way to steal someone’s hope, the lack of trouble it took to take something so precious from someone that it could never be given back

You were taught how to keep your life in the most dangerous situations, or at very least how to take the other’s, and you were taught that you were to be a star

A star of the family, the best they’d ever seen, you were destined to surpass your father and your father’s father

You were destined to kill

You were destined to be alone

These are the things you were taught and you kept them close to you because what else did you have besides false realities that swam around in your head, made to be truths, truths to you, truths to your family, truths to anyone who would have the displeasure of encountering you?

Your sister would be locked away and you would do nothing about it; you would murder, time and time again, take something from someone you didn’t know, take because you had to, take because you were told to

In your brother’s eyes you were spoiled, and the definition of _spoiled_ to him was not being tortured day in and out when you said one word wrong—that was your grandfather’s mercy, that was the reality of your family

By the time you were six, your body was immune to poison

By the time you were seven, electricity could no longer harm you

You were not scared of lightning, you were not scared of thunder, but you hid under your bed sheets anyway with the hope of protection from something—from anything, protection you were not supposed to want, protection you were not supposed to _need,_ because you were destined to be the strongest, father liked you best, your brother said so, so it _must_ be true

But you wanted it and you needed it; you were a little boy despite having grown up so much quicker and your isolation did nothing but lengthen the gap between age and mind

You ran away and renounced your family when you were twelve with a fair-well to your mother and brother in the form of a knife, something that was meant bitterly but taken as pride from your parents; the exam you took following that was meant as something to pass the time, nothing serious, you just wanted to know that you could do it, but you were not prepared when the person you met there was someone you hadn’t realized you had needed this entire time

You were twelve when you met him and you were twelve when things changed

He was naïve and loud and optimistic and your age and you liked him immediately; it was nice to have a friend and the way he said your name made you happy to have it for once

He wasn’t scared when you told him about your family, but then you hadn’t been particularly afraid he would be; he wasn’t easily frightened, you had known that, and he had strength that was messy and uncoordinated but the sheer force of it seemed to make up for what he lacked

Despite your security in your friend, there was still a part of you that was scared, a part that wanted to hide under the covers, to run away, you were not meant to have friends, you were going to betray him, and if you didn’t he would betray you; people were burdens and relationships were unnecessary; friends were messy, unwanted, you _didn’t need them_

But it was hard to remember that when he looked at you as brightly as he did, like you had known each other all your life, when he smiled at you and said things like _I want to be with you,_ so unabashed and honest and painfully, _excruciatingly_ trusting

He didn’t think you would betray him

You didn’t want to betray him

At twelve years old, you were still vulnerable, still young and naïve and oddly hopeful for someone who had a childhood filled with blood and agony instead of toys and bedtime stories, and he made an impression on your young mind; he was someone you started thinking you wouldn’t mind staying with

_You’ll want to kill him one day_

You didn’t want to kill him

You didn’t want to hurt him

You didn’t want to hurt anyone anymore

It was hard living clean because you still got the urge to do it— _snap their neck, rip out their heart, do it, it’s easy, they’re so annoying and this would shut them up for good—_ like an itch that wouldn’t go away even if you scratched it

So you stopped scratching it and eventually it faded to a dull throb, something that wasn’t on the forefront of your mind but still easily accessible with a flip of a switch

The days passed with him and you would follow him into hell, you felt like you had already on more than one occasion

He was growing and suddenly you were thirteen, you had lived a year of your life with him, without killing uselessly, you hadn’t betrayed him and you hadn’t had the urge to hurt him once

In fact, the desire to protect him was stronger than anything you had encountered; it was heavy in your mind, a weight on the back of your tongue, you knew he could protect himself when he needed to but you still liked the idea of helping instead of harming and the idea of him getting hurt was more painful than the memories of whispered _you’ll kill him one day_ by a smothering, twisted love that you hadn’t cared for in almost a year

When he lost his protection you vowed to be that for him, to watch over him so he wouldn’t get hurt even if he didn’t think he needed you to, and your subsequent jealousy from the girl interested in him was for once not the main thing on your mind

Instead it was your fear of abandonment, not _by_ him but from yourself

You wanted to protect him, you _needed to protect him_ but you—

You were destined to kill

You were destined to be alone

And ripping out the needle like ripping off a band aid wasn’t entirely gratifying because despite it being the main culprit of your fear, the words had been hammered, hammered, hammered into your brain even before that, they had been injected into your very blood like the poison you built resistance to, they were the shocks of electricity that you received every day of your life for no reason other than existing—

The words were your bedtime stories, they were your equivalent of dragons being slayed and princesses being saved and knights in shining armor, you never had a knight, you were never the knight, you were the dragon, taking the princess and keeping her in misery, you were justified in doing so because you were _born to do it_ , it was your birth given _right_

You were going against your very own existence in refuting the needle, in rejecting the words, and that’s what made it all the more satisfying when you won the following fight, you won it knowing you were denying your family and protecting him in the process

You would not betray your friends

By the time you were fourteen, he had hair down to his back with fists bloodied to the core, blue staining your vision with tears streaming down your face

He was a hurricane and you were caught in the middle with everything to lose, _him to lose_

You called his name over and over again like you had told the woman, now your friend, to do only a few hours ago; it felt like days ago, it felt like _years ago,_ this was not the boy you had somehow fallen in love with, this was not the boy you had held onto and wished to never let go

This was the broken, shattered remains of a fourteen-year-old, still a goddamn _child_ , caught in grief

This was the result of a mind that served as wreckage, tears indistinguishable from blood

The sounds of bones cracking mixed with the sounds of labored breathing like he would shrivel up and disappear if he stopped destroying the bruised body lying there beneath him in a puddle of blue

He was not himself and you weren’t either

You had not protected him

There was nothing you could’ve done to protect him

Those words he spoke with a mouth normally so sweet hurt more than any bullet wound, any poison, any electricity; you would’ve gladly gone through all your childhood torture over again if it meant this wouldn’t have happened, you would’ve chosen that in a _heartbeat_

_Since it means nothing to you_

Only a few hours ago you had reached your breaking point and fallen apart in front of a girl-turned-monster, childish sobs wracking your body like drums beating down on you, _thump-thump-thump_ , heart so heavy it hurt to breathe

And now you were staring wide-eyed at a creature you had prayed you wouldn’t see, the image of someone lost

You had never believed in a god but you thought for a moment then that it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to pray because he was slack in your arms, you carried him back to the castle where lovers would later sleep for the last time, you carried him and prayed and the image of a boy in a man’s body would not leave your mind, scarred onto the very core, scalding when you closed your eyes

He was going to die and you had failed

You hadn’t protected him


End file.
